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Quick Primer for E-Commerce Email Marketing

Email marketing is still the queen of remarketing and ROI in digital marketing. Everybody is talking about Social Media. Yes, it is an amazing channel for interacting with your audience but email marketing still comes the first when it comes to reaching your ultimate goal – the conversion. Email is really important for building relationships with new and current customers, and even with the past customers because it gives you a chance to speak directly to them. You can build loyalty and trust in your brand, right in their inbox.

After working with many e-commerce clients, I found two essential tactics that you need to follow if you want email marketing to work for you.

START WITH A WELCOME EMAIL

If you want to compose a good welcome email, these are the ingredients you need to have:

A recognizable design – Make sure your subscriber recognizes your email template, brand colors, and messaging voice. Quick hint: Best method is to address each subscriber as “you” to personalize your message and start building a relationship.

A clear message – After a short introduction, welcome your subscriber and state your purpose of the email. Set some expectations, because your first message should tell your subscribers everything they need to know about you and what your future emails will include.

A simple thanks – Use this email as an opportunity to say thanks, they came this far just for you. Showing some gratitude can create a big impression on how they see your brand as a result.

Lastly, provide an incentive – Offer them a discount or freebie as a welcome gift or tell them you’re going to offer useful content, tips that benefit them in some way.

DON’T FORGET YOUR CART ABANDONERS

1# Rule: People abandon their carts all the time.

#2 Rule: They can always come back. To make them come back, these are the ingredients you need to have in your cart abandonment email:

A reminder of what they’ve abandoned – It’s always possible that after some time your customers decide that they do want to buy after all. This process may take a few hours or even days after abandonment so be mindful when to remind them the items they saw in the first place.

A great subject line – Abandoned cart emails are like bonus email for customers. Even more so, they’ve come to expect these bonuses as a reminder of what they left behind. But remember they’re also shopping around and may get multiple abandon cart emails at the same time. You need to make sure your subject line stands out amongst all others. Key elements: An attention-grabbing subject line with friendly voice.

A sense of urgency – Even though they didn’t want to buy in the first place, customers are afraid that something they want to buy might sell out. Tap into that fear, and urge your customers to buy ASAP.

Bonus: An enticing discount – From what I’ve experienced most customers abandon their carts because the final price is more than what they expected. When people think about how much they’re going to pay, they only think about the items they added to the cart but there’s taxes and shipping… So they get scared! Offer them an additional discount to make them come back.

That said, now you know where to start, and if you are going to start up an email marketing campaign, you also need to offer good content to the right people at the right time, and you have to make sure it includes an effective marketing strategy.

Great content will make your emails intriguing and convert people into fans and customers. But even with all the strategy in the world some people just can’t connect to their audience. Others simply don’t like writing. No matter what your problem is you can always let veterans take the wheel so you can sit back and relax, I mean, take care of other more important business, like scaling! There is a reason Kraft turned to content marketing and was a key speaker in the 2014 Content Marketing World Summit. After traditional advertising failed them they turned to content marketing and saw a 4x ROI. Disclaimer, now I can’t legally say you will get 4x ROI without getting burnt by someone (there is always that someone), but I can say you can give us a try and you just might be pleasantly surprised.

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